No. 11 Arizona women’s golf will travel to Corvallis, Ore., for the Pac-12 Championships this weekend.
The tournament is hosted by a different Pac-12 conference school every year, and this year, Oregon State will host the championships at Trysting Tree Golf Club.
Junior Kendall Prince is the only team member that has played at this course, and said she is looking forward to playing on the course again.
“I think it’s going to be fun,” Prince said. “I’m going to be back home and my family, friends and sisters will be out there.”
Prince is from Lake Oswego, Ore., and won the Oregon Women’s Amateur last year.
There will be 11 of the Pac-12 schools competing this weekend, and five of those are ranked in the nation’s top 10. The field will include No. 1 USC, No. 2 UCLA, No. 6 ASU, No. 8 Washington and No. 9 Stanford.
The Wildcats have earned a No. 6 seed for this tournament and will be paired up with Colorado and Washington State.
The first day of competition will tee off at 9:40 a.m. on Friday with the tournament’s final round teeing off at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Arizona’s last tournament was the Silverado Showdown, which took place April 14-15. The team had 10 days to prepare for the Pac-12 Championships.
“We just played in a tournament last weekend, so we know what we need to work on,” sophomore Lindsey Weaver said. “The course that we played was similar, so that helped us prepare.”
Along with feeling ready, the team’s confidence is high and believes that could play be a factor in this tournament.
“It’s all about confidence,” freshman Jessica Vasilic said. “Confidence makes your abilities stronger and makes you able to do things you never thought really possible.”
Arizona’s lineup for this tournament will be Prince, Weaver, Vasilic, junior Manon Gidali, Weaver and freshman Wanasa Zhou.
Even though Prince is the only player that has played this course before, head coach Laura Ianello said her team is talented enough to win the tournament.
“I always expect all my girls to have great weeks because they’re talented players,” Ianello said. “Every single one of them could win a tournament, which is really cool.”
The Wildcats have won seven Pac-12 team championships throughout the program’s history. Arizona has won four Pac-10 Individual Championships, with the last having been in 2001.
—Follow Fernando Galvan @fgalvan35